My review of Maschine+

So I am not a Native Instruments user.

In the past I used FM7 FM8, Absynth. Nor Kontakt as I am multisampling my own stuff.

The hardware I own to schetch ideas on is missing proper audio recording. No guitar input or proper multitracking on My OP1 or Pioneer SP16.

So the Machine_ is a good candidate, I could perhaps built my liveset around it. Record ideas from keys, bas, guitar, voice... Machine+ looks really promising. More or less Ableton's push but hardware.

The built quality is splendid and the thing looks damn sexy.

The pads play very well and it a joy to finger drum on them. Playing keys on it is not so great but ok.

Machine+ has been plagued by issues, stuttering, glitches, high cpu etc. But the latest update should take care of those. Well I updated directly,

Multi sampling is the thing that motivate me to buy it.

The expansions are great although it is not very creative if you don't select your own sounds in my opinion.

Now after 3 days with Machine I made 1 track and got to know it a bit.

But there are issues. Often the low end just sucks, often there are glitches, kick drums sound like an mp3, Why? I have only one kit open.. not much fx and cpu is already 35%. When you play fast it often stutter...slightly.

The sound is dull, no oversampling it seems and the dynamic range seems low.

It just does not sound good to me.

So disappointing but I am returning it,

Pro

amazing pads
nice design
the only groove box with this many capable synths
Great expansions with great kits

Cons

expensive
sounds dull
Not able to do proper sound design.
often buffer underruns
no oversampling

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Maschine Plus

Comments

K.sils

Optionally a memory card should be chosen for the Exstrem pro at 300mb / s. And bitmap card.

mezzurias

To be honest I got a demo unit so it was pretty good in-terms of price but I definitely wouldn't pay full price even with the discounted pricing for the thing. It's a bit tragic really. The CPU usage is criminal on this thing and NI knowingly sells their overly CPU intensive expansions to people. I created the simplest project with just 3 groups one for drums one for bass and one had two synths. The thing was hitting 40% already.

Coming from the MPC/Force this was shocking to say the least. Did NI not do any kind of optimization to this thing?

Space Cat 303

Internal synthesizer instruments are more CPU intensive than expansions.

I have projects with 8 groups and several synthesizers, which use almost 80% cpu, and yet everything works perfectly.

CPU usage is not linear, it's not because 3 groups use 40% that 6 groups will use 80% but rather around 50%.

As for the sound bug that causes audio crackles, it is known and will be fixed.

olafmol

“As for the sound bug that causes audio crackles, it is known and will be fixed.”

I don’t think so. If they would have been able to fix it, they would have done so. Don’t believe the promises. Nobody from engineering or product ever comes here, we only have to the NI “defusers” here, who to be honest, know just as much as most of us do.

ozon

@mezzurias wrote:

The CPU usage is criminal on this thing

How do you define criminal CPU usage? Seriously, I have no idea how to understand this expression.

NI knowingly sells their overly CPU intensive expansions to people

And this is especially malicious because…?

I created the simplest project with just 3 groups one for drums one for bass and one had two synths. The thing was hitting 40% already.

What would be an acceptable CPU load in your opinion?

What problems are caused by 40% CPU load? Is the unit overheating?

Kaiwan_NI

@olafmol Did you just call us defusers? 😂

There's indeed a bug ticket for some audio issues and the product team is keeping track of reports that came in through support.

~~But to really verify if this is a known bug @flyweight we'll need more info from you.~~

Edit: This might be fixed by upcoming update. I'll give you a heads up when we release it so you can try if it resolves the issue you're having.

Kaiwan_NI

Just a heads up that a new version of M+ which addresses the performance issues is now available. Can you please update your M1 and you still experience audio crackles?

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